Look guys, Izen here explained the situation of the meta quite well:
www . youtube.com/watch?v=nq4rbsEx-1I
TLDR: BL and CR determines the meta so hard that it manages to displace whole specs regardless of how well blizzard balances the damage/healing output.
So if BL and CR determine the meta so much, then Blizzard should just give it to every spec. Simple as that.
well yea everything is possible… but at what cost?
I did a +19 Fall with this comp:
DH Tank
2x Hunter
1x Feral
Resto Druid (me)
The feral did 30k dps
At the second boss, when the second ring went off, the hunter more or less died instantly.
The feral was dead after 2 seconds into the fight, but didn’t really matter as that person was literally useless.
The crappy hunter had 0 vers. It was almost impossible to even keep them alive with full hots on a double dragon pull on tyrannical.
I though why the heck? Am I so garbage on my rdruid?
we one chested the key and I had 130k overall HPS (without last boss)
So right after I did another Fall, this time a +18
DH Tank
Fury
Destro
Mage
I literally did not need to heal anything. People were so tanky that 1 hot was enough to keep them topped.
30k overall HPS
Thing was not that the first group did no mechanics, because they did (except the feral that was always dead)
while certainly the first group was quite crap because people were blaming me all day that they get no heals. It felt terrible to play with 3 squishy targets.
So really I have no idea how hunters can do high level keys without externals and even then at encounters with consistent pressure, they are just god awful to heal (rise and fall stand out here)
This is not your fault. Its literally 100% Blizzards fault for designing such a stupid boss with so many hidden mechanics.
The hunter did not know the following:
If you have the debuf:
If you stand STILL (in the white zone) when the dispel goes off you receive ZERO damage.
If you MOVE (while in the white zone) when the dispel goes off, you receive DOUBLE tick of the wave. Effectively 1-shotting him.
From a healer perspective, this happens often because the 1st person receiving the dispel gets zero healing because he will be the one receiving the least damage. Its the rest of the party, and especially the 2nd person with the dispel because he is receiving the rot damage everyone gets, PLUS the dot, PLUS the passing wave.
If you DONT have the debuf:
If you stand close to someone with the debuf, you WILL get DOUBLE damage of the passing wave when the dispel goes off. Effectively 1-shoting you.
If you move in the OPPOSITE direction to the passing wave you ALSO get DOUBLE damage, effectively 1-shoting you.
So TLDR:
This boss should be: Get debuf stand in white zone and move so the black zone does not catch up. And dodge balls.
To: That, PLUS a bunch of hidden mechanics that can 1-shot you.
So its not a the problem there is not the hunter (as a class), nor your skill as a healer. But the complete disregard of Blizzard for tuning things. For which they are already 3 months late.
And its ridiculous that you need a special weak-aura to tell you if people are not moving and on the right zone. And have things like prio lists and stuff like that.
And now you know why that hunter got 1-shot. Because DOTI is the worst dungeon done by Blizz in a VERY long time. Ragefire chasm was designed better than DOTI. And after the masterpieces of Mechagon and Tazavesh, the fact that we got that turd of a dungeon in the M+ pool is disappointing.
While I like Izen’s videos and I think he talks a lot of sense, there are things he’s missing in this case. I’ll make a list of points:
If you give BL and CR to specs that don’t currently have it, you will swing the meta even harder towards certain class/spec combos. The requirement for both of those currently requires 2 specs that might lack certain other traits like survivability, heavy CC or massive damage. Homogenisation isn’t the answer.
well at least then you dont have to balance around buff but you have to balance around defensives available to classes which is at least 1 less problem.
right now we have classes like ret and mage who have crazy defs and also BR / BL
there are many balancing approaches but blizzard just choose to make some specs OP in a season and then rotate. This is very easy for them and also creates more play time.
I’m not sure I agree that they choose to do that. It would require a level of planning that I can’t give them credit for. But if it is what they do, then it suits me pretty well. I play around 50% of dps and tank specs to some degree most seasons, so it’s easy for me to pick something that’s relatively strong and in demand to focus on. I like the variety.
I have to agree that buffs that give such an advantage (BL and CR) should be homogenized.
Because right now, blizz has to balance:
AND
Eliminate one of those from the list, and Blizzards job becomes easier. Therefore, much more probable to succeed in getting as close as possible to a good balance.
An alternative to balance all 4 aspects would be to give tradeoffs: You got BL but do X% less damage. Or you got a ton of deffs but do less damage. Which I think is not the right approach.
Because today should blizz succeed in balancing both deff, CC, and DPS of a ret and a warrior (an ideal scenario)… turns out ret has CR and warrior does not. So what are your options? Give more damage to Warrior? How much more OP would a warrior have to be to effectively replace a ret?
A nightmare IMO. Because of 1 spell.
And to be honest, 2 spells is far from “homogenization”. It would be worse to homogenize CC for example. Everyone with a shaman interrupt and a cap totem. That truly would remove the flavor of all specs.
Are you going to address any of the points I raised?
All you’ve done so far is used more words to say the same thing you said in your previous post - the one I already replied to.
Timeways is definitely my least favorite boss, in part because I’m usually busy taking care of myself and still ill-prepared to make sure everyone else plays the mechanics correctly. I also really dislike the trash right before it, at least as a healer.
I’m glad I timed this at 20 tonight and got the 1H I wanted from the end boss, so I’ll only go into Fall with good groups, if at all! Still missing Rise. I tried a few times lately, but missed the timer by 8s, a minute, etc. Always because of dumb stuff, like someone not standing at the edge at the PvP boss, ignoring the axe throwers, people not finding the right Morchie quickly enough (I have trouble with this too), damage being inexplicitly low, etc.
Those mega dungeons are fundamentally easy, and the Fall timer is very generous, but mechanics matter a lot more here than in most of the other dungeons.
I can really recommend the No Pressure Discord group. I’m on there as well and happy to tank it if you want it on a 20. It’s a good community.
Thank you! I’d love to take you up on this if I can’t get Rise 20 out of the way this weekend. Friends and I plan to do some runs tonight (and possibly on Sunday, depending on some family stuff), so if we get our hands on a Rise from running/trading in keys, we’ll try this again. I’ll definitely knock on your door if it doesn’t work out. Really appreciate the offer!
No, it’s just waste of time to argue with trolls.
well currently keys are really bad.
There seem to be at least always one person that gets hard carried or even 2 dps do terrible dmg and not doing anything useful.
Even had that problem in 2 +23 keys.
Then people say hurdur its just a 23 ez pz while doing 100k ST dmg
once in a while you get a competent group and your +20 rise feels like you didnt even need to be there that is was timed.
Uda and I disagree on some things, but I wouldn’t call them a troll 
First S1 is a great season when it comes to balance. But if my memory serves me correct, my educated guess: Because Boomie had Wild Groath and Feral did not. Healing checks were massive. Enh and SP were taken for the same reasons.
So basically Feral wasent taken because Boomie had better utility and equivalent AoE damage.
But you replaced 1 CR spec by another CR spec.
It offered much more interrupt and offhealing than GDruid. Also, it was overall tankier because it just got off the ret rework.
But its trading 1 CR spec for another CR spec. Kinda like your first case.
VDH has more interrupts and CC. Thats why.
However, the moment Rets got buffed and you could get your CR that way guess what happened to prot palas?
Surviviability. Same reason Enh and Ele are not taken and they have BL.
And those are the reasons why some specs were chosen IMO.
But fact of the matter is that conceptually speaking, you have to balance utility (BM, Ele problem), damage (Ret and DK problem), and tankyness (DH vs. everyone else).
If on top you have to play the “shuffle game” with CR or BL… well… dunno… its difficult.
You haven’t answered my why that concept isent true.
Thanks again for the offer! A friend got another Rise +20 and this time it worked out, with six minutes left.
I’ll try and be more active on the No Pressure server - the community there seems to be really nice and welcoming.
Congrats!.
Thanks! I enjoy very much our discussions.
They are quite entertaining (in a good way).
I agree with your responses aside from feral. The reason feral wasn’t meta was because the community seems to find something “embarrassing” about feral (I’m not sure how else to explain it). Feral was significantly stronger in AOE damage than balance, and the extra healing feral provides through Nature’s Vigil (which doesn’t do nearly as much for balance) more than compensated for lack of Wild Growth.
That aside:
I agree 100% that it’s difficult, but that’s part of the game. If you’re going to homogenise two of the things you listed, why not homogenise the rest? I mean, once you start doing that, where does it end?
Every group has a requirement for a tank, a healer, a CR, a BL, adequate utility, damage, healing, defensiveness, etc. It’s just the list of things that are required.
The CR is one thing that can be (largely) compensated for by taking engineering and using the engi bracers. There is a failure risk, but it’s very low for engineers. And there’s a failure risk with the standard CR, especially if the tank dies. There’s no guarantee that whoever brings the CR will have time to cast it before the mobs start killing the rest of the group. This is why it’s typically best if the tank or healer brings the CR - because it’s instant, whereas dps CR has a cast time (I think DK may be the exception to this).
And then we have BL… well, there’s drums. Is that optimal? Absolutely not, but good enough for a mid-20s fortified key if you have the AOE damage to make up for it. And even when we talk BL, every BL is not equal. MM hunter’s has the lowest value because they lose dps from having a pet out, BM is next lowest because they lose survivability by having a BL pet out, then mage because they lose personal damage by having to use it for the group (rather than getting the double benefit if someone else provides the main BL). The most “valuable” BL comes from shaman, evoker or survival hunter because there’s no “cost” to them for using it.
There are so many things to take into account, and to juggle, when making a group, and I find that interesting. (I also find the changing needs depending on which affixes are active on a given week interesting as well, which I know you don’t.)
There will always be a meta comp. Ideally, that comp will only be fractionally better than anything else, but unless we totally homogenise every aspect of the game, there will be one comp that’s better than any other - at least on paper. If it’s a choice between access to the highest level content being affected by class and spec, or the game being homogenised and boring, I will gladly take what we currently have.
It all boils down to this doesn’t it? But why does it have to swing from black-to-white so suddenly?
There are “in between” situations which are overall better. I always give the “combat mana regen” of healers because its what i know best. All healers have something to regen mana. None have the same thing. Its both homogenized and diverse at the same time.
The question is: Should you do it for absolutely everything? NOPE. Only for the things that are so blatantly OP that they require it. Like combat mana regen.
Like BL and CR. Which are so OP (as in they give such an advantage) that they even made attempts over the years to give it to everyone with items as you mentioned.
But the question now is: Why stop there?
I am of the filosophy that blizzard CANT make classes more unique, withe more unique rotations and spells particularly because of buffs like BL and CR.
Like what happened to Prot Pala. They cant “rework” ret to make it “OK” because it would replace prot pala. And if they make Prot Pala “unique” in any way, it would replace ret.
All because of CR.
And the day Blizzard decides to rework RShaman it will be a nightmare. Because if they give us “cool stuff” and on top we are one of the 2 healers that provide BL… then… were OP all of a sudden…
So TLDR:
Agreed.
But its not an “all or nothing” equation. We have to accept that some things need to happen. Otherwise we will never (by mathematical impossibility) reach anywhere near the “ideal state”.
And there are other forms to achieve that than “homogenization”.
So I would gladly trade BL and CR for everyone. Eliminating one factor that hinders diversity so we can then all have more diversity. Because new, fresh, cool stuff will be easier to balance with each-other.